Friday, July 5, 2013

After clicking the random button at TVTropes until I got one suitable for prose, I finally got "Boxed Crook". So here's my story; "Equal and Opposite." (Full disclosure, the final word count is over the limit at 1,069.)

Megan’s breath echoed in her ears
as she breathed through the respirator. With delicate movements she attached
the wide device to the boards above her head, careful not to disturb the
container’s volatile contents. Once it was secured, she inched back through the
narrow space between her ceiling and the floor above, climbed down a ladder to
her floor as quietly as possible, and sat on the floor, leaning against a wall.
She sighed, relieved.

She took off her
safety goggles, a balaclava, the respirator and some gloves, shaking her blond
hair free. She placed them in a tub with the rest of her clothes, then took a
shower to rinse off the dust, using a pen to prod a washcloth under her ankle
monitor. She grimaced when she washed her cheek, the bruise that lay there
still fresh. Before they roughed her up, Megan’s cute round face helped convey
the image of a wholesome Midwestern girl, the sort of girl who would fix your
car and bake you a prize-winning dessert for the road.

Not the sort of
girl who used her chemistry degree to assassinate people with homemade bombs.

Megan dried off
and dressed in jeans, a t-shirt and running shoes. She picked up a detonator
and sat in a chair in the other room, watching the hole she cut into the
ceiling through the doorway.

Three had jumped
her and made the offer: kill a defector for them, and they’d forgive her murder
of twenty-two leaders of the Acacia crime family. Plus, she’d be hired for the
defector’s old job.

She’d smirked,
nonchalant, and asked, “What job is that?”

“The Acacia family’s
assassin on retainer,” Lucas replied.

Megan’s poker face
shattered. She’d begged, saying she’d do anything else, kill anyone but him.
But when her alternative was taking a trip to the wharf with some padlocks and boat
chain, she chose the hit.

Trying to
assassinate Arkin Stone was safer than certain death, but not by much.

After she’d
accepted, they gave her a phone, the ankle monitor, ten thousand dollars for
expenses, information on Arkin, and two weeks. After wasting a day and a half
trying to get the monitor off, she collapsed on her apartment floor sobbing. No
trick she had would remove the monitor without crippling her or alerting them.
She could run, but not far.

After falling
asleep under a table, she woke up the next morning and almost returned to
hysterics. Instead, she took a deep breath and stood. She opened Arkin’s file
and had a plan by sunset.

Arkin was too
cautious for car bombs. He’d be especially vigilant of tails so soon after
killing more Acacias than Megan had, he prepared all his own food, and
seduction, in addition to its other unpleasant aspects, was so transparent it was
drawn out suicide. But after looking at Arkin’s address, she found her one remotely
plausible option.

After the Acacias persuaded
the apartment’s owner to lend Megan the key, she spent a week logging Arkin’s
comings and goings until she knew safe times to work. Even then, she sawed
slowly, making as little noise as possible in case he had security with audio recording.
Procuring bomb ingredients was much easier, smuggling them in grocery bags,
hidden in boxes of cereal. Assembly and design were child’s play. All that
remained was the wait.

A door creaked
open upstairs and Megan shot up, alert. She stalked through her own apartment
as she followed the footsteps above her, caressing the detonator’s button with
her thumb. After some time, she paused in the bedroom’s doorway, waiting for
him to get on his bed. For what seemed like ages, he moved to one part of the
room for a bit, then moved on, never once touching the bed. “Come on,” Megan murmured,
clenching the doorframe with her free hand.

“Come on and?” a
voice asked, as something metal pressed into the back of Megan’s head.

Her heart stopped.
Arkin pushed her into the room with his free hand, took the detonator away,
then duct taped her to a chair. She looked at him and asked, “How?”

“You really think
I wouldn’t keep tabs on all my neighbors? You did admirably well, but I have
this wonderful toy that scans cell calls. I could have killed you anytime, but
it wouldn’t have sent the…proper message to my old employers.” He looked up at
the hole in the ceiling, then smiled at her before climbing the ladder. Megan
said nothing and hung her head.

“I thought you
were a pro, dear,” Arkin’s voice called down, as he unscrewed the brackets
holding the bomb in place, his calves and feet hanging out the hole. “No
pressure plates, no hidden wires, nothing to defuse. I guess when I let my
friend upstairs in, we’ll be gentler than usual. It’s the least we can do.” He
palmed the bomb’s bottom to keep it from falling before he unscrewed the last
bracket.

“Now, would you
prefer a beating first or—“

There was a hiss
as the oils from his skin reacted with the bomb’s coating and dissolved a hole
in the metal. Several liters of liquid came through the palm-sized hole and
drenched Arkin. He tried to scream as the acid melted his face, but some had
fallen into his open mouth and melted a hole in his throat. As air rushed
through the hole the only sound he made was a thin sucking noise, growing
fainter as the hole widened. His legs thrashed, twitched, then stopped.

…

Some time later,
Lucas Acacia and his cohorts knocked out Arkin’s friend as he tried to break
down Megan’s door. They stormed into the apartment to find the bizarre scene in
her bedroom. Lucas was the one who finally broke the dumbfounded silence.

“How?”

Megan shrugged.
“He was too crafty to kill with a bomb. I had to get creative.”

“You planned
this,” he deadpanned.

“Not exactly, but
Arkin is—was—the kind of guy that required an unpredictable Plan B, and if the
bomb didn’t kill him, I needed a hell of a Hail Mary.” Megan narrowed her eyes
at them nervously, suddenly remembering she was taped to a chair.

“You are going to
honor your part of the deal, right?”

“Of course Ms.
Vanzetti,” Lucas said, waving his hand. He stared at the hole. “We’ll discuss
the details in the car.”